


Soon it will be over and buried with our past

by lloydsglasses



Series: all ur favs are ace [12]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) - Fandom
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, F/F, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 18:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6999418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lloydsglasses/pseuds/lloydsglasses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles finds him sitting in the kitchen early one morning. Erik's hands smooth over a crumpled photograph, and his grief wraps itself around Charles’ mind like a noose, unyielding and inescapable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soon it will be over and buried with our past

Erik does not speak much in the days after the house is rebuilt. Occasionally Charles catches him talking softly with Raven, and once or twice he’s seen Erik sitting quietly beside Jean in the sprawling grounds, but mostly his friend keeps to himself.

It is early one morning when Charles finds him in the kitchen. He’s sitting at the breakfast bar, his hands smoothing over a crumpled photograph, and his grief wraps itself around Charles’ mind like a noose, unyielding and inescapable. He wheels himself over, and Erik’s wife and child smile up at him from the photo.

“They were very beautiful,” Charles says softly. “I’m so terribly sorry, my friend.”

Erik sighs and closes his eyes. “So am I.”

He doesn’t say anything more but Charles knows, in the way that he can’t help but know things, that Erik doesn’t want to be left alone. They sit silently together, and as he watches Erik’s fingers trace gently over the photograph in his hands Charles feels the all too familiar stab of self-pity, though he banishes it immediately; now is certainly not the time for such things, and he hardly begrudges Erik for finding the happiness that had for so long been absent in his life, even if that happiness didn’t include Charles.

“I miss them so much, Charles,” Erik says suddenly, and the pain in his voice is raw and unchecked. “I miss waking up next to my wife in the morning and tucking my daughter into bed at night. I miss hearing them laugh and seeing them smile, and I miss listening to my daughter as she sings with the birds.” He lapses into silence again, and Charles swallows around the lump in his throat.

“It was easy in the end, like you said,” Erik continues after a while, a self-deprecating twist to his lips as he finally looks up at Charles. “They made it so easy to just forget about everything else. Everything I’d done, everything that was done to me… I let it all go.”

There are tears in his eyes. Charles has resist the impulse to reach out to Erik’s face and wipe them away; it isn’t his place anymore.

“It wasn’t easy at first, with Magda,” says Erik, eyes distant now, caught up in remembrance. “I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want anyone to replace you.”

Charles smiles a sad, wistful sort of smile. “I’m glad she did,” he says earnestly. “I’m glad you found her – that you found something in her you couldn’t find with me.”

There’s a pause, as Erik stares at him blankly. “I loved you just as fiercely, Charles.”

Charles blinks in surprise. “It’s not quite the same though, my friend.” Erik frowns and, faced with his very obvious confusion, Charles hurriedly continues. “I simply meant... Well. You never wanted that. With me.”

“A family?” Erik looks hurt, and Charles wishes to God he’d never said anything in the first place.

“No, I meant– I meant that you never… desired me.”

Erik blinks at him a few times, before his eyes widen comically. “You’re talking about sex.”

Charles does a quick mental sweep to make sure there are no children nearby. “Well yes, sex. But you know it means more than that.”

Erik stares at him like he’s lost his mind, then shakes his head. “I don’t know what you mean. I told you years ago: I’ve never desired anyone like that.”

“But…” Charles hesitates, because this is not really what he wanted to be discussing at 4 o’clock in the morning, especially not when he’d happened upon one of his oldest and closest friends grieving in his kitchen. But Erik seems to be waiting for him to carry on, so he pushes down his doubts and continues. “You must have changed your mind by now. You and your wife had a child.”

“Yes, because we wanted a child,” says Erik, and Charles winces because he sounds both annoyed and defensive. “Not because we wanted sex.”

 _We._ Charles’ mind hones in on that one word, and Erik levels him with a measuring stare. “Magda didn’t want to either,” he says, as if he and not Charles is the one who can read minds. “She was like me, Charles.”

 _She was like me._ It shouldn’t affect him so much, but the words feel like a kick to his chest. Charles can’t help but remember a time long ago, when he had been the one to show Erik that he wasn’t alone. He swallows and tries not to think about that.

“Did you enjoy it?” He blurts, and then frowns in horror at what he has just asked.

But Erik looks thoughtful, and the anger he was directing at Charles only moments ago seems to have faded in favour of nostalgia. “I enjoyed feeling close to Magda. And yes, it felt good… But it took a lot of effort. We didn’t do it again after Magda conceived.”

Charles frowns down at the table. For all that he can see inside people’s heads, he realises that this is something about Erik he will probably never fully understand. All the same, something like acceptance settles inside him. The easy self-confidence that Charles had possessed all those years ago had been broken as he lay bleeding on a beach in Cuba, and it had never fully mended. In his darker, most irrational moments he wondered if Erik had left because Charles wasn’t enough. Years later, when he had peeked with Cerebro and found Erik married to a human with a one-year-old daughter, Charles had wondered the same thing, wondered if Erik had found him insufficient. It’s a relief to realise that Erik’s wife never stirred something in him that Charles could not.

 _No,_ Charles thinks, _she just brought him the peace that you couldn’t._ It’s a saddening thought, but it brings Charles back to the real reason he had chosen to sit beside his grieving friend that morning. He looks over and sees that Erik is staring down at the photograph again. Charles puts what he hopes is a comforting hand on his friend’s arm.

“Will you tell me more about them?” he asks, tentatively.

Erik looks up and studies him carefully. “You could look, if you wanted,” he says after a moment, inclining his head a little. “I think I’d like you to look.”

Charles smiles gently and squeezes the arm beneath his hand, before raising two fingers to Erik’s temple and seeking out the bright sparks of happiness in his friend’s familiar mind.

**Author's Note:**

> I am currently riding the high of post-movie bliss so I'll probably end up writing way too many X-Men fics in the next couple of weeks!
> 
> I have [tumblr](http://lloydsglasses.tumblr.com) \- come say hi if you want to squeal about the X-Men! :D


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